


Hearth

by cobweb_diamond



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobweb_diamond/pseuds/cobweb_diamond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Ninth Hispania, after such a long time spent haunting his thoughts, came to fade from Marcus’ life like the pain of his injured knee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unwhithered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/gifts).



> This is a mixture between book and film canon -- they're more or less the same, except Cub doesn't appear in the film. For those who haven't read the book, Cub is the wolf that Marcus and Esca adopt as a puppy (seriously) and leave with a friend while they go to retrieve the eagle.

The pair of them left Calleva looking far less disreputable than when they’d crossed the Wall, but it would be a full winter before they were both back to fighting weight. Esca must have assumed that Marcus had made his offer in the heat of the moment, for he looked surprised when Marcus asked him where they should go next. But decide he did, and after a week of being overfed by Uncle Aquila’s cook they were on their way to a village a tidy distance from anywhere Marcus had ever been before.

Being from Clusium, Marcus did not know the first thing about building a house in the British fashion. He ended up being little more than Esca’s pack-horse until the house was finished, fetching stones from the brook and then carting them in from further afield as Esca slotted them together like a child’s puzzle to make their new home. Marcus fetched and carried and slotted their great grey slab of a hearthstone into place while Esca worked on the wattle-and-daub walls, his smaller frame allowing him to clamber onto the roof and thatch it himself.

By the time they lit their first fire on that hearth, the snow was beginning to melt and new crocus buds were poking through. One day Marcus awoke to realise that his bad knee, long thought to be ruined beyond all hope, was now almost serviceable again.

The Ninth Hispania, after such a long time spent haunting his thoughts, came to fade from Marcus’ life like the pain of his injured knee.

* * *

The messenger came when Marcus was cleaning rabbits on the front step. Usually he and Esca hunted together as they’d first done at Calleva, but Esca had had business in town for the last two days and Marcus hadn’t much patience for bannock and broth every morning. Besides, hunting took his mind off bitter thoughts of why Esca was away so often. Marcus had no right to demand explanations from him, after all.

His fingers were working without much thought, warmed by the afternoon sun. Only recently had Esca worked out that Marcus could do this himself. At first, Esca had cleaned all their kills because he was the slave and Marcus told him to. Then it had become habit until Marcus eventually realised that Esca thought him incapable. When Esca, exasperated, finally sat him down with a fresh pig carcass to teach him how to gut and skin, Marcus had merely taken up his knife and started in on it without comment, Esca frowning and looking more and more incredulous by the second.

‘You really thought I could hunt but not do this?’ Marcus had said, grinning.

‘How am I to know how Romans raise their children? Perhaps you had a slave following you around to slit the throats of your quarry even then, and another to wash off the eggs when they came out of the chickens.’

‘What's this of chickens?' he teased. 'Eggs come from market, every Roman boy knows that.'

‘Letting people assume you’re an idiot only works if you’re not already an idiot,’ Esca said, but there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth and for him that was almost a smile.

‘And I suppose that’s so very different from when you go mute and allow passing Romans to think you are still my slave?’

At that, Esca had taken up his knife and began to work on the pig where Marcus’ hands had stilled. ‘Sometimes it’s better to let them think that,’ he said shortly, and Marcus, fresh from pointing out that he wasn’t as stupid as he looked, felt it would be unwise to ask what Esca meant.

Cub must have noticed their visitor before he came into view, for he sat up from where he’d been lolling at Marcus’ feet and pricked up his ears. A few seconds later a man on horseback came over the crest of the hill, yellow hair gleaming in the sun. Marcus and Cub watched warily as the man and his horse approached, stopping a polite ten or twelve feet from Marcus’ doorstep. ‘I have a message for Marcus Flavius Aquila,’ he said, although Marcus did not believe for a moment that he’d grown so un-Roman in appearance that the messenger couldn’t tell he was at the right house.

The message tablet was a plain one with a familiar seal, and after a moment of confusion Marcus remembered where he'd seen it before: it was the personal mark of the Legate. The last time he'd seen it, it had been stamped on Esca's manumission form.

 _Marcus Flavius Aquila, servant of the Empire,_ it began, in crisp scribal writing. Marcus turned away from the messenger, reading slowly for he’d had little chance to read _anything_ since he left Calleva. By the time he reached the end of the letter he knew his expression must have changed entirely, for he had to school it back into politeness when he turned to thank the messenger.

‘I cannot answer this at once,’ he said, thinking, _I cannot answer this without Esca_. ‘When must you return to the Legate?’

‘Tomorrow. He expects his reply in no more than a week.’ With that, the messenger flung him a messy salute, Roman-fashion, and turned in the direction of the village. Marcus was left alone with Cub, the writing-tablet dangling from his fingers by its string.

The letter had been a summons. A summons for Marcus, no longer a soldier, to attend to the Legate at Segedunum for a mission of some importance, to weed out those men among the ranks who thought it acceptable to receive bribes to allow travelers to cross the Wall unchecked. It was underhanded work, spying almost, but the lure of the Eagle was so strong he almost felt it in his throat. When he’d first been injured, what _wouldn’t_ he have given for an opportunity like this? And this way he could have Esca by his side -- that is, if Esca agreed to it.

He knelt down, knee creaking a little as he moved, and buried a hand in the ruff of fur around Cub’s neck. ‘I must find Esca, my friend,’ he said. ‘Stay here and guard the house while I am gone, yes?’

* * *

It was an hour’s ride to the village, a familiar hour that Marcus and his horse could travel almost without thinking. It left far too much time for him to turn the letter over in his head, wondering what Esca would think of it. A small voice at the back of his mind had been wondering, quietly, if this village life was too dull for men like them. And not even village life, not really. Just the two of them out here in their house, and these days Esca away by himself as often as not. Perhaps, whispered the voice, they were due an adventure. At least then they would be working together, not Marcus hunting by himself while Esca vanished off elsewhere at dawn.

He stopped at the first house inside the village, where a woman was feeding spoiled grain to the geese.

‘Good day to you,’ he said, the foreign lilt of the words sounding clumsy even to his own ears. ‘Have you seen Esca?’

The woman smiled, apparently unbothered by Marcus’ still-embarrassing pronunciation. ‘He’s down by the farrier’s.’

Marcus smiled his thanks, ducking his head out of respect, and rode on between the houses, keeping an eye out for Esca’s familiar loping gait.

The farrier was a silent fellow, at least six feet tall but not threatening with it. Not by Marcus’ standards, anyhow. He was hammering flat a horseshoe when Marcus rounded the bend in the path through the village, and looked up only to nod a greeting before going back to his work. There was a pony tethered by the gate, having its mane de-tangled by Esca. It did not look much like essential work, and Marcus felt irritation begin to boil in his chest. Esca was spending days away from home just to play with the horses in the village, like a child? Was he so keen to be away from Marcus?

‘Marcus,’ he said, his hands stilling on the pony’s neck. ‘I didn’t know you were coming to town today.’

‘A messenger came. From Londinium.’

Esca’s chin tilted up, curious, and Marcus suddenly felt uncomfortable being so far above him; too much like a master. He pulled the tablet from his cloak and handed it down, dismounting onto the hard-packed ground in front of the farrier’s shop.

Esca didn't even bother to open the tablet. ‘I can’t read this.’

 

‘Oh, I -- ‘ Marcus began, embarrassed, but Esca’s mouth was twisting into a little grin so he decided to let it go. ‘Here, I shall read it to you,’ he offered, taking it back and unclasping the tablet’s leather covering.

Esca glanced round to where the farrier was working and took the reins of Marcus’ horse, tying her to the fence. ‘Come on. It must be important, to take you all the way out here an hour before nightfall.’

They crossed the pasture behind the farrier’s house, Esca coming to sit on the dry-stone wall at the end. ‘What of Rome?’ he said easily, folding up one knee beneath him. 'Have they changed their minds and decided to shower you with sesterces after all?'

‘The message is from the Legate. He asks me to return. Or go to the Wall, at least. Here -- ‘ he said, and began to read quickly so as not to look at Esca’s frozen expression. He didn’t look at him again until he’d finished and hung the tablet back on his belt. ‘What do you think?’

Esca was expressionless. ‘Are you going to do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Marcus helplessly.

‘ _Servant of Rome,_ ’ he echoed, in his own tongue. In the words of the Brigantes, "servant" and "slave" were one and the same.

‘I _am_ a servant of Rome, Esca,’ he said in Latin.

‘And what will they be paying you in return? To help them throw my people back over the Wall?’

‘They're trying to root out spies and cheats, Esca. Not the Brigantes.’

‘I didn't say the Brigantes,’ he said bitterly, and Marcus realised with a jolt that Esca spoke of slaves. ‘They’re sending you to find people who let runaways over the Wall.’

Marcus felt his hand close over the tablet by his waist, knuckles cracking. The Legate had written to him not because Marcus knew how to cross the wall unscathed, but because he knew which men had let him. And a year ago he would have done it. He’d have marched straight from here to Segedunum if it meant having an Eagle to follow again.

He felt Esca’s eyes on him in that opaque, evaluating way he had. Early on Marcus been wary of his own face, sure that Esca could read his every thought on it, but at the moment he was thankful. Esca would be able to tell that he hadn’t known, that he hadn’t worked it out before. Better an idiot than a villain.

‘Are you going?’ Esca repeated.

‘I -- ‘ said Marcus, and stopped. ‘I came here to ask you.’

Esca’s eyebrows went up. ‘You need my permission, O Centurion?’

‘Your blessing only,’ he said, for sometimes one of them had to be gentle, and it wouldn’t be Esca.

Esca’s shoulders relaxed a little. He reminded Marcus of Cub after he’d been pulled away from a fight with one of the village dogs.

‘But you would have gone,’ he tested.

‘I came here to discuss it with you, but...’ The Marcus he was today was not a man to go hunting down escaped slaves. Not at the Wall between the land where his father had died and the land where his father now lived. And certainly not without Esca. Esca, who he'd first seen at the point of a sword, poised to gain his freedom in death. Esca, whose manumission forms they kept in a locked box beside the fireplace, under the folded blankets. ‘The legions were my home. I could be more use there than I ever am here.’

Esca slid down off the wall and onto his feet, and for one bewildered moment Marcus thought that he’d managed to provoke a fight.

‘Am I “of use”?’ Esca demanded, eyes flashing.

‘Esca, what -- ‘

‘You Romans! A man is not the sum of his uses. Stop measuring yourself by the Eagle and remember where you live _now_.’

‘I live in an empty house,’ he snapped back, and Esca’s eyes went wide.

‘So you decided to run back to the barracks?’

'That was before I understood what the message really meant,’ he said, cutting Esca off before he could begin. And ‘I was going to ask you to come with me.'

‘You are the only Roman who can claim my allegiance,’ Esca said softly. ‘But I wouldn’t have gone, even so. Are you so tired of life here, already? Our hearthstone has barely had a chance to go black.’

 _'You_ are the one who is always away,’ said Marcus. ‘Leaving me behind like a war widow,’ he added in jest, although he regretted saying _that_ as soon as the words left his mouth. It smacked too much of the truth.

Esca groaned. ‘ _This_ is why you were willing to up-sticks and flee back to Rome?’

‘It would be easier to be apart from you if I was -- apart from you,’ he answered, wishing he wasn’t so clumsy with words.

‘That’s why I _went_. We can't spend every waking second together.’

‘You dragged me from the water when I was freezing to death. You carried me across the Wall. You helped me me find my father's Eagle. There's _no-one_ I’d rather spend my days with than you, Esca.’ He looked over the hill at the heavy red clouds signalling the setting sun. It was easier than looking at Esca, who always seemed so close to anger even when he was in a good mood. ‘When my father used to come home from war, we’d hardly know him. I loved him because to me he was a god, but my mother... she saw him every two years, at best. And every time he returned he’d be a different man. I thought to myself, what kind of a life is that? That’s why I never married.’

After what seemed like a horribly long silence, Esca said, ‘Do you realise you just compared us to your parents?’

Marcus flushed, but when he glanced up he saw a rare grin spreading across Esca’s face. ‘Yes?’ he tried.

‘And yourself to your mother, left at home to tend the flocks?’

There was some kind of buzzing in his ears now, perhaps all the better to drown out his embarrassment. ‘Herds,’ he mumbled. ‘Not flocks. My family raised horses.’

‘And was that the only reason why you didn’t marry, Marcus?’

Esca was a lot closer, now, his eyes sparkling with mischief. Marcus was about to dredge up some explanation, some question, when Esca reached up and cupped the back of his neck, pulling him down so their lips met, confused at first but then aligning as Marcus’s brain caught up. Esca’s fingers squeezed at his neck the way they’d hold back Cub, and Marcus felt the calm ease he’d missed over these long months, the ease of waking up in the morning knowing the routine of his day and which tasks he had to do. Esca had never given him an order, not that he could remember anyhow, but this was as good as. The small compact power of Esca’s body pressing up into his, and Esca’s rough hands guiding him to where he should be.

‘In the village,’ he said, catching up at last. ‘You were hiding from _this_?’

‘You were going to run back to the Legions,’ replied Esca. ‘So let’s speak no more of that.’ And this time Marcus was the one who brought them together, fingers tangling in Esca’s belt to rest at his waist, tight and sure.


End file.
